4.5 stars for this beautiful and heartbreaking story

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Sparrow is a haunting, beautiful story of Savannah coming to terms with the abuse in her life. In this young adult novel, we follow the story from two viewpoints, Savannah and her friend Lucas. They're both ballet dancers and best friends - training together to dance Swan Lake.

Savannah starts dating the popular boy at school, Tristan King, and soon becomes enamored. However, as time passes, we discover not everything is as wonderful as it appears. Lucas thinks he knows what is going on, but is his view reliable or influenced by his feelings for "Sparrow".

This book explores so many difficult dynamics, like families dealing with loss of a parent, physical abuse, controlling dating situations and emotional trauma. It looks at how families can break down when they don't talk about things and work through them, as well as how anger can both break down relationships but end up hurting you even more than the person you're angry with in the first place.

This ya novel has incredible depth. It's about being brave in spite of terrible circumstances. It's about overcoming trauma and rewriting the messages we've internalized that are lying about our own self worth and why we are victims.

Highly recommend.

Triggers: Physical Abuse, Parental Abuse, Controlling Relationships, Physical Violence, Cancer, Loss of a Parent